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https://chriscoyier.net/2024/01/24/what-happened-with-the-web-monetization-api/ Chris Coyier Archives Timeline Dark Mode? [*] January 24, 2024 What happened with the Web Monetization API? I was pretty hot on it for a minute. I wanted it to succeed and thought it had the bones to make it. Coil was the main startup trying to push it. They did the right thing by just making it work first, showing there is interest, then pushing to get it standardized. But Coil failed. When we started Coil in 2018, Interledger was only an idea. Over the last five years we breathed life into the technology and sparked a vibrant ecosystem around it. Now it's time to pass the torch to a neutral body in the form of the Interledger Foundation to steward the future development of Interledger. I don't know much about Interledger. It seems alive-ish? They had a "Summit" recently and I watched some of it but it didn't do much for my understanding. Then recently I saw a good thread from Sara including this: [958shots_so] Sara started it by saying that she just wants to "click a little button and send money from me to the person/org/persons operating a website". Totally! I'm obsessed with that use case. It needs to be built into the browsers and web standards such that it's incredibly smooth and fast. I wanna send $1 to a website, it happens instantly and anonymously, and the developer can do things around this. Like unlock features! For instance, stop showing ads, offer more complete downloads, unlock tutorial courses, etc. Make it easier and faster than using a credit card. It appears that the Web Monetization API is up to the task. I friggin' love the example of how to use it as a developer: My Blog Code language: HTML, XML (xml) And of course there are more APIs, like for checking how much a user contributed, if they have already contributed, etc. Does it have legs anymore? I just have no idea. Sorry if the title of the post led you to believe I might have an answer. I'm just looking for the answer. Again though, poking a button to send a website bucks through web standards is a great idea. I'll leave it with my favorite use case (removing ads) and what I've written before, in hopes that this part can be done right: Removing ads is the most basic and obvious use case, and I hope some people give that a healthy try. [...] I'd want to clearly be able to control the dollar-level of when you get that perk, but more importantly, in order to really make good on the promise of not delivering ads, you need to know very quickly if any given user is supporting you at the required level or not. For example, you can't wait 2600 milliseconds to decide whether ads need to be requested. Well, you can, but you'll wreck your ad revenue. And you can't simply request the ads and hide them when you find out, lest you are not really making good on a promise, as trackers'n'stuff will have already done their thing. Update: The Answer PPK is now DevRel for the Interledger Foundation, so apparently it's heating up again. The news is that the API will hook up to an online "wallet" powered by fynbos. I've never heard of it, but it looks like it connects to banks and credit cards, not crypto. It's not that I'm some big stan for Big Banks, but crypto was (is) just so absolutely riddled with scams and crime that I just can't anymore. Decoupling the Web Payments API and crypto is certainly the right move right now. Related CodePen I work on CodePen! I'd highly suggest you have a PRO account on CodePen, as it buys you private Pens, media uploads, realtime collaboration, and more. Get CodePen PRO 3 responses to "What happened with the Web Monetization API?" 1. pd says: 01/30/2024 at 7:30 pm If some of the existing providers of similar services, such as Patreon, are not adopting or considering adopting this, doesn't necessarily bode well, does it? Is there a more generic web payments standard that may also reduce the clunky UX barrier to online payments in general? I briefly thought I glanced at a mooting of such. "Monitization" is quite the euphemistic term for simply getting paid subscribers to fund websites, instead of (bloody hope so!) invasive tracking and ads as the only hitherto means to make any money from a simple website (without being a toober). That's what 'monitization' is though: selling subscriptions. When selling anything, there's the offer and the acceptance ... and the means of payment. It's incredibly scary for a lot of people to do anything financial online. Any site can put "secure" as an absolute term on their site but nobody is responsible for auditing that usage of such terms and holding sites accountable for false usage. Add in hacking and the myriad clunky payment UX scenarios out there, who would opt in to small, regular payments? For some time, has the content creation industry given more 'air' to anything and everything but the actual UX of selling subscriptions? Or is the whole experience much more annoying than those promotional cards that fall out of magazines the moment you pick one up? How did Brave go with their alternative of actually paying users, somehow, rather than individual sites selling subscriptions? Anyone ever tried it and continued with it? Perhaps a topic for another post, Chris? Reply 2. peak.singularity says: 02/06/2024 at 7:47 am Last I checked, cryptocurrencies are the only working option so far (but come with their own issues of course). As much as I wanted the various versions of Flattr to succeed (and Coil seems to mostly copy it ?), there's still the issue of it being a platform. Of course it would have been a Swedish (later German) platform, and not a Silicon Valley one (which is also the most likely reason why it kept failing), which is a big deal to me, but in a few decades it would probably just have morphed into another Visa/Mastercard... (what would have prevented them closing down their source code after getting big enough that the network effects would have made forking impractical?) Another alternative that could theoretically have worked is Francis Muguet's Global Patronage... but good luck having a bunch of governments cooperate with each other AND keep commercial pressure groups from sabotaging it. Reply 3. timdaub says: 02/06/2024 at 1:27 pm Chris sorry but the tweet from Sara that you feature here is false information. Interledger was founded by the CTO of Ripple Stefan Thomas and they grew that community of people by hosting events all around the world. I worked at a company back then and my colleague co-chaired the group for a while. Those working groups were directly founded by crypto currency enthusiasts and so for Sara to suggest they were "captured by web3 scams" is plain false because in fact they were "founded by web3 scams" lol https://xoxo.zone/@sara/111774681057884946 Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] [Chris Coyier ] Chris Coyier is my name and I live in Bend, Oregon with my family. 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